California and the West : Honk if You’re Sick of the Traffic

You may have pulled up to a gas pump this Labor Day weekend, winced at the racing price meter, then driven off into crawling traffic. Maybe even bounced through a few jarring ruts.

The bad news is that it’ll get worse Tuesday. Not only do the rush hours return, but most schools reopen. There’ll be the annual late-summer shock of little cherubs and their teachers clogging the highways.

More distressing is that California’s congestion probably isn’t going to be much better in the foreseeable future. The only hope is that Sacramento can get its act together to keep traffic from becoming even more snarled.

California’s population climbed from 20 million in 1970 to 30 million in 1990, and--according to projections--will soar to 40 million by 2010 and approach 50 million by 2020. That’s claustrophobic and scary--unless you envision profiting from this propagation as, say, a housing developer, restaurateur or gas station owner.

Even then, however, profits could plummet if people can’t drive to your business or you can’t deliver products. One recent study found that the average L.A. motorist wastes 76 hours a year stuck in traffic.

Between 1967 and 1997, according to the state Transportation Commission, travel on California’s roads increased by 184%, but lane mileage expanded just 29%. And although the population rose by 70%, the number of vehicles skyrocketed by 130% because of multi-car families.

Looking ahead 10 years, California needs $84 billion in road construction and repairs for which there now is no money.

“The reality is California faces some serious economic problems if we don’t do something about the condition of our transportation system,” says Larry McCarthy, president of the California Taxpayers Assn., a business lobby. “I don’t know of any business organization that isn’t supporting more highway funding.”

Indeed, both the California Taxpayers Assn. and the state Chamber of Commerce advocate raising local sales taxes to help pay for road projects.

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That brings us to the state Capitol, where legislators and lobbyists seem to be spinning their wheels--and running out of gas--searching for a new source of highway funds.

They face a Friday deadline. That’s the final day of this year’s legislative session. There’s a creeping mood of Wait till next year.

“The problem is,” notes David Ackerman, a highway lobbyist, “next year never comes.”

Here’s a look under the hood of this stalled jalopy:

* Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) proposed $16 billion in transportation bonds. He scaled it back to $8 billion when consultants warned that voters probably wouldn’t pass a double-digit bond measure. Then he took out all the dollars when Assembly Republicans refused to provide enough votes for the two-thirds majority required of money bills. The money-less bill passed the Assembly on a simple majority vote Friday and is headed for negotiation in a two-house conference committee.

* Republicans balk at bonding because of interest costs. A 20-year, $8-billion bond actually costs $12 billion, they note. They demand more pay-as-you-go financing.

* Here’s where that racing price meter at the gas pump is relevant: The pump price is jacked up by a 36-cent fuel tax on each gallon of gas--half state, half fed. Most of it is spent on transportation. Also, the basic sales tax is added to the total pump price--a tax on a tax. Half, roughly $800 million, goes into the state general fund for non-transportation spending--schools, prisons, welfare. . . . Republicans insist on using that solely for transportation. There’s a proposed highway lobby compromise to use $200 million.

* A bigger obstacle for Republicans is a companion state constitutional amendment by Burton. This would make it easier for counties to raise sales taxes for road projects. A two-thirds vote now is required. Burton and business interests want to lower that to a simple majority. In several counties, sales taxes were raised temporarily on a majority vote, but they will need two-thirds for renewal. And a two-thirds vote is virtually impossible to obtain. For anti-tax Republicans, however, two-thirds is gospel.

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“Fine,” Burton says. “If the Republicans want to vote this down, it’ll make a great campaign issue next year. I can hear the commercial at rush hour: ‘Stuck in traffic? Blame Assemblyman So-and-So.’ ”

In fact, a new statewide poll by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that more people are unhappy about local traffic then they are schools, crime or smog.

More leadership and some calm compromising are needed to find a way out of this Capitol gridlock. Otherwise, today’s traffic will be much worse tomorrow--and we’re not just talking about Labor Day vs. Tuesday.